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The Man for Maggie
Lee McKenzie
The minute Nick Durrance steps onto the porch of the once-grand, now run-down Meadowcroft home, he knows something is different. The woman at the door is not his ancient former teacher, but her young, beautiful grandniece. Maggie is new to Collingwood Station and has inherited the house, which she intends to turn into a natural beauty spa.Nick can't see the women of this posh town putting yogurt and strawberries on their faces, nor can he see them accepting the eccentric Maggie. But when the whole town starts gravitating to her, Nick realizes this woman is special–so special that she's even changed how people see him, a man who went against the wishes of his wealthy family to start his own construction business.It turns out the house is not all she's working on–and when he finds out what–or who–her real project is, he's not going to like it!
He gave her a light, quick kiss
“That’s what I wanted to do last night, but you were too busy,” Nick said.
“Yes, I was.” But Maggie wasn’t busy now. Now they were on exactly the same page, and the book was about to get very interesting.
He must have been able to read that in her eyes, because his next kiss was different. He still leaned up against the wall, with only his mouth on hers, yet she heated up as though his body was pressed against hers.
“So what were you doing last night that was more important than this?"
Maggie opened her eyes and tried to focus. “It’s a secret.”
Nick withdrew a little and gave her one of his intense looks.
She snagged the front of his shirt with both hands and pulled him back in. “It’s a good secret. When the time is right, I’ll tell you all about it.”
He seemed to relax a little. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Then I’ll just have to be patient, won’t I?”
Dear Reader,
People often want to know how I come up with ideas for my stories, and for the first time I don’t have an answer to that question. All I can tell you is that one day I sat at the computer and Nick and Maggie were clamoring for me to tell their story. Looking back, I suspect Maggie was working a little of her magic on me, the same way she does on the people of Collingwood Station…and on that one special man in her life.
Like Maggie, I’m sure we all want the best for the people we love. But how do we achieve the delicate balance between letting them make their own way in life and trying to share the load with them? At what point does helping become meddling? And what if stepping back will make a bad situation worse? Not easy questions to answer, but one thing is certain. When one person leaps without looking and the other has both feet firmly planted on the ground, we can expect a few laughs and the occasional disaster along the way.
I hope you have as much fun reading this book as I had writing it. Please drop by www.leemckenzie.com for a glass of Maggie’s ice-cold lemonade and a warm chocolate chip cookie. Collingwood Station will always have a special place in my heart and I hope you’ll visit again when my second book set in Collingwood Station, With This Ring, comes out in December 2007.
Lee McKenzie
The Man for Maggie
Lee McKenzie
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my family
Thanks for believing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From the time she was ten years old and read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, Lee McKenzie knew she wanted to be a writer, just like Anne and Jo. In the intervening years she has written everything from advertising copy to an honors thesis in paleontology, but becoming a four-time Golden Heart finalist and a Harlequin author are among her proudest accomplishments. Lee and her artist/teacher husband live on an island along Canada’s west coast, and she loves to spend time with two of her best friends—her grown-up children.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter One
Nick Durrance looked at the run-down two-and-a-half-story house and double-checked the address he’d scrawled on a scrap of paper. He’d been surprised—okay, astounded—when his answering service told him that Maggie Meadowcroft wanted an estimate on a remodeling job. Collingwood Station was small enough that there could only be one Miss Meadowcroft. She had been his high-school English teacher, although it had never occurred to him at the time that she had a first name. She’d been positively ancient then, and that had been ten years ago.
Hers was the only house on the block that hadn’t been renovated and it definitely needed work. Paint. A new roof. Here’s hoping old Miss Meadowcroft had a nice bank account, because he really needed this job.
He pushed the gate open and lunged for it after it swung askew on one hinge. The house also needed new front steps, although to his surprise they held his weight. All but the second step, which looked too risky to chance.
The doorbell had an Out of Order sign taped over it. He added new wiring to the long list forming in his head and knocked on the wooden frame of the screen door.
“Come in!” The voice that beckoned from the back of the house had a husky, musical quality that was utterly feminine and startlingly young. Nothing at all like the Miss Meadowcroft he remembered.
“Wait’ll you try this,” the voice said. “You’ll love it!”
Definitely not Miss Meadowcroft. He gave in to curiosity, pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. The hallway was filled with antiques, many of them much older than the home’s owner. He’d have expected the place to be a little on the musty side but instead the air was strangely…fruit-flavored?
“Come on in!” she called again.
The scent of strawberries and that fascinating voice enticed him down the hall to the kitchen. The voice that had conjured up a sultry, mysterious woman actually belonged to a slender redhead who sat at the kitchen table, gazing into a mirror propped against a canister. She was scraping some kind of creamy pink stuff out of a blender with a spatula and smearing it all over her face.
She dumped the spatula back in the blender, spread the stuff around with her fingers and spoke without looking up. “I finally got it right. You will not believe how good this feels.”
She popped the tip of one finger between a pair of very luscious-looking lips. “It even tastes—” She glanced up then. “Oh! You’re not Allison.”
He watched her grab for the nearest kitchen implement and smiled when she ended up arming herself with a wooden spoon.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How did you get in here?”
“Nick Durrance. Through the front door. It wasn’t locked and you did say I should come in.”
“I thought you were Allison.”
“I think we’ve already established that I’m not.”
She glared at him and he chided himself for being a smart-ass. Let’s face it. Most women would be surprised to look up and find a six-foot-four construction worker standing in their kitchen.
She pointed her weapon at him. “Allison lives next door. I called her to come over and test my new rejuvenating pore-cleansing facial mask. She’ll be here any minute.”
The corners of his mouth twitched and he had to cover them with his thumb and forefinger to make them behave. He understood she was startled but she looked perfectly ridiculous. A pencil protruded from the untidy bundle of dark red hair piled on top of her head and almond-shaped brown eyes gazed suspiciously from two circles in the pink stuff she’d smeared on her face. What man in his right mind would attack a woman who looked like this?
“Listen. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He took a step forward, and she jumped to her feet and jabbed the wooden spoon in his direction.
“Watch it, mister. I’ve taken self-defense classes.”
He found that difficult to believe. From the neck up, she looked like a cross between Wilma Flintstone and Lucille Ball on a bad-everything day, but from the neck down…whoa! Even faded denim shorts, a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and a string of pearls couldn’t disguise a body that just wouldn’t…
Wait a minute. Pearls? Who wore pearls anymore? Even his mother had abandoned hers for the kind of bling that Hollywood types wore these days. Apparently pearls were passé. Maybe too reminiscent of the dutiful wife who greeted her husband at the door at the end of the day with a sweet smile and a whiskey sour.
One thing was for sure. This woman was no June Cleaver. If the state of the kitchen was anything to go by, she’d created her rejuvenating cream from yogurt and an assortment of fruit that she’d whipped up in a blender, resulting in the fruit salad scent that had drawn him down the hallway. That, and the voice that felt like the hot-rock massage he’d once experienced at the hands of an even hotter little masseuse whose fear of commitment matched his own. Not that he’d wanted her to commit. He’d wanted her to pay for the work he’d done for her. She’d had other ideas.
“I’m sure your friend is eager to have her grocery store facial but I’m here to see Miss Meadowcroft, so if you could—”
“I’m Miss Meadowcroft.” She still stared at him warily but lowered the spoon a few notches.
“Are you?” This time he let the corners of his mouth have their way. “Then I have to tell you, that miracle product of yours really seems to work. You look much younger than the last time I saw you.”
She laughed at that. Not the contrived halfhearted giggle that masqueraded as laughter in so many women. Hers was deep and exuberant and it flowed over him like honey on warm toast.
“I’m her niece,” she said. “Her great-niece, actually. Miss Maggie Meadowcroft, makeover specialist.”
“I see. Is Miss Meadowcroft—retired high-school English teacher and tormentor of teenage boys—here?”
She went serious. “You were one of Aunt Margaret’s students? She did have a way of always making you want to try harder, didn’t she? To do better.”
That was one way to put it. “I wasn’t one of her ‘do better’ students, but apparently she wants to renovate this place, and that’s something I can do.” Although Shakespeare was still way beyond him, he’d like to show Miss Margaret Meadowcroft that he was good at something.
Maggie tipped her head to one side and looked him up and down, taking her time about it. “I’ll bet you’re a Capricorn. Determined, distrustful, a little on the cynical side.”
“So I’ve been told. It takes most people longer to figure it out though.”
She smiled again. “I knew it. I have a kind of sixth sense about these things.”
Give me a break. “Listen, is your aunt—” Some of the yogurty goop dripped off her chin and plopped onto the worn linoleum.
She laughed again. “Oops! I’m dribbling.”
He grabbed a towel off the back of a kitchen chair and tossed it to her.
“Thanks. I’ll go wash this stuff off.” She flung the wooden spoon onto the table and dashed out, holding the towel under her chin.
She was back in less than two minutes and all Nick could do was stare. Why would anyone cover such a beautiful face with…food?
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No. No, everything’s fine. I should probably talk to your aunt though.”
Her eyes went moist. “Aunt Margaret died six months ago.”
Add clueless to his list of Capricornian flaws. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
She grabbed a tissue out of a box on the table and wiped her eyes. “It was a heart attack—quick as could be, the doctor said. She didn’t suffer at all. I still miss her like crazy but she’s in a happy place now so I try not to feel badly for her.”
A “happy place”? How was he supposed to respond to that? She talked as though she had some kind of inside information.
She brightened a little. “She left everything to me. That’s pretty wonderful, don’t you think?”
Wonderful for his bank balance. “So, you want to renovate this place?”
“Yes. Lucky for me she left enough money for me to fix up the house and start my business.”
Lucky. So why was his conscience niggling at him? “It’s going to need a lot of work. I think it should be rewired and it definitely needs a new roof. You know, you could always sell it and buy yourself a nice condo.”
“A condo?”
He might as well have suggested she cut off an arm.
“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “I don’t just want to live here. I’m going to open a day spa and do natural makeovers. It’ll be called Inner Beauty.” She smiled up him. “‘Making the most of what you’ve got, naturally.’ That’s my advertising slogan. What do you think?”
“Catchy.”
“I thought so, too! Most spas just work on the person’s external appearance but I do makeovers from the inside out. If a person feels good about themselves, then they’re naturally beautiful. You know what I mean?”
He didn’t have a clue.
“Everyone’s always said I have a way with people. Even Aunt Margaret thought so.” She waved a hand around the kitchen. “This will be my workspace where I’ll create all my beauty products.” She ran a hand over her cheek. “Like my rejuvenating pore-cleansing facial mask. It works like a dream. Feel.”
She wanted him to touch her? No way.
“Go ahead.” She took his hand and guided it to her face. “Amazing, huh?”
